Saturday, March 21, 2015

The Affordable Care
Act(ACA) – also known as Obamacare – is a law enacted to ensure that all
Americans have access to affordable health insurance. It supports discounts(known as tax credits) on
government-sponsored health insurance plans, and expanded the Medicaid
assistance program to include more people. The law requires most Americans to have insurance by Feb 15
or pay a fine at tax time. The Obama administration extended the deadline to
April 30, which is the end of the tax season, so to allow people who discover
they would owe a fine, to still sign up for coverage.

The Wall
Street Journal reported that many uninsured are choosing the penalty over the
opportunity to enroll in a
healthcare insurance plan. Choosing to go without health insurance puts your
assets at risk. If you consider yourself healthy, you can select a plan with
low premiums. You will have higher out-of-pocket costs at the time of care than
with more expensive plans, but you will still have protection against an acute
episode of costly care, which if unprotected, can drive you to bankruptcy.

If you do not have health care insurance
through your employer, and you are not covered by Medicare or Medicaid, then
you can buy a healthcare plan onwww.healthcare.gov if your state participates in the
federal program or else from your state’s health care website. For access to an
up-to-date information on each state’s health insurance marketplace profile,
check outhttp://kff.org/state-health-marketplace-profiles/.